PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
C.O.885
Reference :-
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
3 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
24
one of which should be that he shall have pre- viously earned by prison labours such a sum of money beyond his current cost to the establish- ment as will enable him to subsist without temptation to dishonesty, for the period of his permitted absence. For the remaining portion of his life, besides leayes of absence with more liberal conditions as to time and place, he might be allowed to receive visits in prison more frequently and freely than before from any respectable person of his own sex whom his leave of absence might have afforded an opportunity ol interesting in his welfare. All privileges from first to lust must of course be made to depend upon continued good behaviour and the strict observance of all prescribed conditions.
These arrangements require explanation. It may be asked, inasmuch as all penal purposes are assumed to have been answered before the pro- tective imprisonment begins, why not begin at The once with the more indulgent regimen ? answer is that hope as well as fear is an essential element of prison discipline, and when imprison- ment is to last for life or for long terms of years, gradational steps are required in order that hope may not be eliminated, and the prisoner must have in view the acquisition of advantages to come no less than the forfeiture of advantages in possession, as a sustaining principle and a motive for good behaviour. It may be said, however,— is not this attribution to the prisoner of a hope reaching to quinquennial periods of alleviation
inconsistent with the general shortsightedness which impute to the criminal mind ? But if as I maintain, the fear of what is remote will not operate effectively upon the criminal classes when at large, it does not therefore follow that the hope of what is remote will not operate upon them when in prison. On the contrary, it may well be the fact, and I believe it to be the fact, that within the walls of a prison even the most degraded
and contracted mind will look farther into the future for objects of hope than such minds are capable of looking under different conditions and with other forecasts. We have to consider how indestructible hope is in the mind of man, and how, whilst there is life in the heart, hope will finger in it, sustained by such food as it can find, be it never sq meagre and far to seek; so that in a blank present and with a bare paulo-post future, it will, out of the very necessity of its existence, fasten and feed upon a future more or less distant. This then being the outline of such a system of protective imprisonment as I would propose, it would be capable of varied application to various cases.
When imprisonment for life is awarded for atrocious crimes, it would be neces- sary that the penal imprisonment to precede the protective should be exceptionally rigorous and accompanied with severities of the prompt and proximate kind, such as should be capable of striking terror. But when imprisonment
for life should be awarded, as I think it ought
[254]
FI
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
1 2 3 4 5 6|||
Reference :-
COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TOVE
استاد منشار
S